love me more
by lenina20
Summary: Caroline sires her first vampire. Tyler leaves. Klaus thinks it might be time he called. KC. TVD/The Orginals crossover. Canon-inspired.


**Hey guys - here is a little story inspired by current canon. It's not much, but I hope you'll enjoy it.**

* * *

It's late, but not too late.

Elena is out on a date with Damon, or maybe on something else entirely, with Damon, that Caroline doesn't want to think about. Why even bother? She's just got back from her own study date with Jesse the newborn vampire, or something close to a study date, so what does she care? There's an unidentifiable tingling still buzzing underneath the pads of her fingers. So let her enjoy herself for some precious moments of solitary, pleasant oblivion before—

Weird, and _welcome_—how reality doesn't come crashing down all over her with the silent thud of a headstone burying down her heart in the pit of her ribcage. Not this time.

This time is just the phone ringing, and her _knowing_.Pinky swear she doesn't have a customized ringtone just for him, but still she knows before she picks it up, biting someone else's smile against her bottom lip.

"Hello?"

He chuckles before he speaks, "How are you liking the perks of the sire bond now, love?"

* * *

_So this is about Klaus_, she accuses, biting down her unshed tears against her tongue, aching for the sweet taste of thick blood sliding down her taste buds.

How dares she, really, accuse him?

How dared she ever hope, that maybe they could be together again, like the start of senior year, and it could _ever _not be about—?

* * *

It's like magic, guilty dirty magic, and it isn't even the first time.

It's the velvet of his voice, the salty taste of his enthralling words.

The weight lifts off her chest, and she thinks maybe the tingling sensation frizzing beneath her skin, crackling into a fully-grown fire, has nothing to do with Jesse after all. Maybe she's growing psychic, and she knew all night that he would be calling, if only to mock her and be an utter creep the way only his charming millinery ass can be.

The smile still jumps off her lips the second the pressure of her teeth, keeping it down, recedes. "Jesse's not sired to me," she scoffs, rolling her eyes into the night, leaning back against the headboard. "And you are gross."

* * *

_We're only together because Klaus gave us permission to be together_.

It's so fucked up, how he played them, that sometimes Caroline catches herself thinking maybe she isn't so angry at Tyler, after all.

He was brave enough to say out loud what she never ever considered thinking to herself.

It was over between them the second Klaus asked Tyler to bite her sweet delicate neck so that he could start moving her delicate pawn piece across the chessboard.

The first check didn't take long after that.

Now she thinks, they're one bad move away from _mate_.

* * *

"Don't be mad, Caroline, sweetheart," he appeases, the tone lighter, the chortle merrier. "You sired your first vampire. I just called to congratulate you, and let you know how proud of you I am."

He's merciless in his teasing, open and genuinely playful—the way only oozing-off-charm Klaus can be, clad in a an elegant suit, looking like a million dollars, stealing Miss Mystical Falls applications and drawing ridiculous pictures of her stupid face and the stupid face of a stupid horse. It works as every time, too, at least for a couple of seconds. She forgets that she's in the middle of a very serious investigation to determine who killed Jesse and why they did it and what they're planning to do with the vampire population on campus. She forgets that if Klaus knows about her hot, smart, undead college suitor, then he knows about the rest of it as well.

That beneath the charm and the smug smirk she can hear twisting his lips upwards beneath his playful taunts—

"Caroline...," his voice drops, and grows heavier, matching the sinking of her heart, the quickening of her breath. "I'm really sorry about your friend, love."

Her breath catches. Her thoughts swirl.

You're not sorry, she thinks, almost immediately. She doesn't allow herself to think about anything else but that—_him_. You don't care about my friend, she insists inside her head. You don't care about any of my friends. You don't care about anyone in the world. You don't even care about _me_. So please, pick up your empty sympathies and shove them up your ass, if you are so kind—

She thinks and thinks and thinks, but she doesn't say a word.

The momentary enchantment burns out in a second, and she switches off her phone without even bothering to hang up on him first.

* * *

During the weekends, back at home, they all try to help Matt with his passenger problem.

It gives them something else to think about—something to focus their attention on. An easier problem to fix than Silas and his ex, the mad doctor at campus, and a secret vampire conspiracy that feels too much like going home again.

Does Matt's passenger know where the anchor is?

Caroline doesn't care much about that.

She feels too itchy inside her skin, still. Every day. So without thinking she reproaches, annoyed at literally _everything_. "Well. That's what happens when you go explore the world and live dangerously on the edge and have gross threesomes with a freaking deranged original and Katherine's _daughter_."

Seriously. How gross is that? Who is this angry, adventurous, careless boy and what has he done with her sweet and good and I-want-nothing-to-do-with-disgusting-vampires Matt?

And also, has anyone called the psycho bitch yet to let her know that their fling's fling has possessed Matt?

Caroline fumes, but no one replies.

No one has time to react to her outburst at all before Jesse interrupts their shock, as always cute and innocent, but now severely, and eternally fucked up. "What's an original?"

Damon's dry laugh sends a half-empty bottle of beer flying straight from Caroline's hand to the spot over the counter in Tyler's kitchen where his head was perched, one nanosecond before he dodged the impact.

He might have retaliated, but Matt raises both hands, silently clamouring for peace. "Care," he appeases, his eyes soft but not kind when he looks at her. "It's not Rebekah's fault."

His voice halts oddly around the name, and Caroline sort of wants to punch him in the face. She's about to retort something clever and equally bitchy because, as far as she is concerned, it _is_ Rebekah's fault that she took Matt away and did _shit_ to protect him—

—but then Stefan speak, and his quiet, confused question cuts off her train of thought.

"Who's Rebekah?"

* * *

Katherine grins. Damon makes a face, and mutters, "Right. That part wasn't in the diaries." But it's Caroline who provides the abridged version of the story, for Jesse's sake more than for Stefan's. They'll have time for that, later.

They'll have time for the truth.

What Caroline says, instead, goes something like—

Rebekah is an original vampire. They're a family of five, but two are dead, so now they're only three. They live in New Orleans. Their mother was a crazy witch who used blood magic to turn them into bloodthirsty immortal creatures so that the werewolves of their village wouldn't eat them, a thousand years ago. That's why werewolves and vampires don't get along, because the vampires ended up eating all the werewolves in the village. Or most of them. From them, from the originals, all vampires were created. They're more powerful than real vampires, and killing them is nearly impossible. Rebekah is the only girl of the family. She and Stefan crossed paths in Chicago, in the nineteen-twenties, and had a brief, torrid affair. It was fun, quick and meaningless. Rebekah doesn't care about Stefan, she never did. Stefan never really had any feelings for her. Back at the time, his humanity switch was turned off, and he was an emotionless killer with no feelings and no compassion.

End of story.

"So that's how you know these original vampires? Because Stefan was involved with the girl? And… also Matt?"

The story has so many blanks that the bits and pieces that she tells while Elena and Damon look the other way might as well be the actual blanks. It makes _that_ much sense. But still Caroline shrugs like it's no skin off her nose. If she doesn't say anything else, maybe Jesse will let go and they can start talking about something else and she can't stop feeling like a gigantic fool with a massive foot stuck halfway down her throat for mentioning Rebekah in the first place.

But then, of course—

"She's a bit of tramp, that sister," Katherine smirks, her eyes solely focuses on Stefan's puzzled frown. Slowly, her gaze drifts to Matt. "No need to draw her back because of what happened with Nadia. I think it's better to let sleeping psycho originals lie where they are now, down and far away in the Bayou."

A bit of a tramp, ha. Caroline bites the snarky remark against her tongue. It's not like Matt's in a mess because Rebekah decided it'd be a good idea to sleep with Katherine's long-lost daughter, quite possibly Elena's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-an-infin ity-of-great-grandmother; who probably had in her mother's genes the ability to use sex as a weapon to manipulate people into becoming possessed by creepy passengers. But whatever, Caroline knows better than to poke Katherine. She's the one who got them all messed up with the originals in the first place. She brought Klaus to Mystic Falls and pressed a pillow against Caroline's face until she stopped breathing, and look at them now.

Imagine if she were to start talking.

It's better to let sleeping psycho originals lie where they are now, down and far away in the Bayou.

* * *

The truth is—

Jesse doesn't need to know about Klaus, because Jesse isn't any of Klaus's nasty business.

He is the mad campus doctor's nasty business. He's only been a vampire for a few weeks, and he and Caroline have only made out like twice, and he is learning and adapting and needs no horror stories about the vampire hybrid king that's going to come and kill him in so many different and extremely imaginative ways if he even thinks about one day into the future, perhaps, entertaining the idea of breaking Caroline's heart.

She's only keeping him in the dark for his own good. Weren't they all a lot happier when they didn't know Klaus even existed?

"Didn't really help much, did it, Blondie? You not knowing he existed when you were randomly killed, so that you could lie upon his creepy altar of ritual horrors and innocent bloodshed?"

She literally growls in anger, but Elena interrupts, her voice calm and deceptively conciliatory. "It seems a bit unfair to me," she counter-argues, throwing a glare at Damon before returning her eyes to Caroline, "that Klaus probably has an army of goons sniffing up that poor guy's trail, and he doesn't even know what he's signing up for."

Arching back her neck, hiding her eyes in the silhouette of the red paper cup, Caroline shrugs. Feigns indifference like a pro, because she is done with acknowledging Damon and Elena like she can concede that they have a say in her life.

"Well, no one asked you," she sasses, right before she gulps down her third. "Besides," she shrugs again, the cup a crumpled ball in her clenched fist. "Jesse and I aren't together. He hasn't signed up for anything."

* * *

_Be the love of my life_, she pleads, pathetically.

Don't just be my first love. Be my last love. Be my only love.

_Love me more than you hate him_.

* * *

They're hanging out in Stefan's crypt—and really, how utterly out-of-character _Spike_ of him—when he actually shows up.

No call. No notice. No warning.

He just flashes through the woods around the cemetery too fast for them to hear, to catch up, to get ready; and then he just casually walks up to their private hiding spot, hands clasped behind his back, hips swaying with the usual flare. He doesn't even flinch in recognition; there's nothing awkward about it. He stops his casual swagger only for a half a second, so that his eyes can quickly brush over Caroline leaving no bruise behind. In the time it takes for her breath to clot in her throat, his bright, relaxed gaze settles on Stefan as he extends his hand in a cordial greeting.

"Hello. Name's Klaus. We've known each other for a while," he smiles, confidently. "But I'm afraid this is not the first time you've forgotten all about me, mate."

Caroline scoffs.

Klaus doesn't even acknowledge her.

He waits impassive for Stefan to shake his hand disinterestedly, one eyebrow raised in blatant contempt. "I know who you are," he rolls his shoulders. "But I'll admit I expected someone... bigger, I suppose. You don't look very diabolical."

Klaus's eyes glimmer dangerously—_diabolically_, Caroline would say, if pressed—so she interrupts him before he can say anything too malicious or compromising, quickly rolling her eyes and standing up next to the tombstone she was happily lounging on before. "That's a big part of his whole deal," she explains. "Looking all—"

_Hot as fuck_.

"Delectable?"

He cuts her off anyway, saying something compromising and annoying the way he usually does. But this time she doesn't even dignify his smartass ass with a comment or a scoff. She crosses her arms over her chest and goes back to ignoring him immediately, the same way he was doing only seconds ago.

* * *

"I'm afraid we have to talk, love."

Isn't that what Tyler also said? Without the patronizing pet name, but close enough.

She knows where these conversations usually lead to. Loneliness and disappointment and regret.

But, she figures—Klaus is out of her life already, so—"Let's talk, then."

* * *

They sit on the roof because the air inside his old house is not breathable.

They don't need to breathe, of course; but they both like it. There's too much dust, too much dirt inside; it smells stuffy and the air is too thick. Soon enough their throats would get dry, and they would get thirsty—and then what?

"Did you know that Tyler was coming to visit me in New Orleans?"

There's no accusation. It's an ice-breaker, the question mark. Of course she knew and of course she wasn't going to warn him. Just in case Tyler thought better and realized a life under Klaus's yoke might be better than no life at all, perhaps.

It's not a real question so she doesn't answer.

After a few long seconds of cool, breezy silence, he relents. "I suppose it's only a matter of time before you find out, anyway. So maybe I should just say it."

She twists her neck so fast it cracks.

He's not looking at her, and of all the terrible things she was expecting, this is the one that doesn't make any sense. He looked her in the eye when he promised a head start, and only a head start. He looked her in the eye when he said they were even, after he drowned Tyler's mom. He looked her in the eye when he bit her and told her it wasn't personal, the fact that he _needed_ to see her dead.

She had known, even when she hadn't dared to think about it.

She had seen it in her nightmares. Klaus's quick hand snatching Tyler's heart off his ribcage and giving it a gentle squeeze, a nervous spasm of his hand, maybe; his lips curling in a barely noticeable grin of satisfaction.

Tyler's lifeless body falling down to the ground with a deaf _thud_.

* * *

It's over.

_We have to talk, love_, he said.

Caroline knows the road those words always lead down to.

Loneliness and disappointment and regret.

He's killed Tyler and now it's over.

(At last—)

It's okay, she thinks. That it will never be okay again.

She would have never begged, not to _him_—

—_love me more than you hate him_.

Not to _him_.

* * *

"I impregnated a werewolf about six months ago."

* * *

Caroline's eyes catch the trail of a shooting star. She barely has time to think, _close your eyes and make a wish_. But still she does—to forget. To disappear. To go back in time.

She gets distracted as the white light flashes and fades out in the darkened night-sky and almost doesn't hear him when he speaks, but still he grants the wish.

Impregnated. Werewolf. _Impregnated_.

"What?"

He still doesn't look at her. Perhaps, she thinks, he's also looking for a shooting star that will make him disappear. He does flinch, this time. He fidgets. His voice quakes a bit when he bends his neck to hide his eyes even further away from her inquisition. "Tyler's old friend, Hayley. She helped me chase down Katherine and let me know she was… interested. My giving Tyler a head start hadn't caused a lasting impression on you, and I was feeling… restless."

* * *

Hayley—

Hayley was interested and Klaus was restless and—what is it to Caroline, anyway? She doesn't care. She doesn't understand. She doesn't quite believe. She doesn't really want to.

She'd thought that Tyler—

She'd thought that Klaus—

"Before you get all indignant about whatever Hayley did and didn't do," he interrupts her thoughts, again. This time he turns around to look at her, at last. "Let me just say that I have no intention of going after Tyler. I don't like to go back on my word. At least not when you are concerned."

She nods, at a loss for what else to do.

Her mind is completely blank. After a violent surge of rushing thoughts spinning madly, now it's all quiet inside her head. She doesn't understand what he is saying, nor is she sure she actually wants to.

So once again she doesn't say a thing.

* * *

The sun is creeping up over the horizon when she starts making sense of Klaus's tale.

He's long gone, but she remains perched on the roof of his mansion. The piece of him that remains in Mystic Falls, of the time that she knew him here.

Before he had to leave because some witches in New Orleans had taken Hayley, pregnant with a magical baby that had been conceived by the witches' design. A magical baby for whom now all the supernatural creatures of the world are raging war. A descendant from Esther, the witch that created vampires and came up with a way to destroy them—and of the Hybrid. A descendant of the first and most powerful werewolf pack to ever howl beneath the moonshine.

They all want him. Her, rather. Apparently, it is a girl.

Tyler wants her too.

He's picked his side in the war that is brewing deeper in the South.

Witches against vampires against werewolves. Fighting to annihilation.

* * *

"He'd never hurt a child," Caroline had muttered, her eyes hidden away from Klaus as he told her of Tyler's visit, of the pack he had been helping in the Appalachians. Who they really were and what they really wanted.

She hadn't fully understood, but she had been one hundred per cent sure of the little she was promising.

_Tyler would never hurt a child_.

Klaus had smiled sadly, the resentment of her confidence plain in the glass that covered his gaze. "Well, apparently, this child is evil incarnate."

* * *

She had almost told him she was sorry.

But she is not.

* * *

Now, what?

She doesn't want to dump Third World War on top of the murder mystery on campus and the millenary _telenovela_ of Silas and Tessa and the anchor the passengers are guarding somewhere deep inside Matt's psyche, probably, but what is she supposed to do, keep quiet?

Klaus is having a magical miracle evil baby with the same wolf bitch that planned the massacre of the hybrids and literally threw Tyler to the wolves afterwards. This baby is coming in three months time, bringing along the actual real apocalypse. Because honestly, what were they expecting it would happened if Klaus were allowed to ever _reproduce_?

"So what, we're supposed to pick a side?" Stefan's face is about to split up in two, Caroline can tell, under the pressure of deciding whether to frown or laugh his head off. "Whoever gets to control this baby lives and the other supernatural species are effectively annihilated, is that it?"

"Roughly."

He grins, looking like a complete stranger to Caroline's revulsion. "So team vampire, I say. The only witch we know is already dead, so."

So—

Tyler has picked the wrong side.

* * *

The plan is simple enough.

One) Defeat Tessa. Find the anchor. Destroy the other side so that all supernatural creatures can move on.

Two) Let Silas kill himself.

Three) Drop out of college, temporarily. There'll be time to compel their way back in, if they ever want to.

Four) Pack a bag and book a flight to New Orleans.

* * *

Or, alternatively—

One) Forget about Tessa and Silas and the anchor. Make sure to bring Matt along so that he can be safe.

Two) Forget about college and Megan and Aaron and Dr. Murder Max Hot Pants.

Three) Pack a bag and book a flight to New Orleans.

* * *

"Jesse," she smiles, clasping her hands together so that he can't see how bad they're shaking. "Have you ever been to Mardi Gras?"

He returns her smile, his pretty eyes squinting a bit in confusion. "Actually, yes, I have. Why?"

"Good," she says, bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet, masking terror with pretend excitement. "You'll be my tour guide, then."

He's very much not convinced, and that is how Caroline knows. No sire bond to speak of, and yet the guilt does not ease off. His frown is unforgiving, the grin completely faded now off his lips. "I thought we were letting sleeping dogs lie."

He's scared, of course. He's just been born into this world, and it is already about to implode on him.

Caroline understands. Or she thinks she does, but—

The nerves win the battle, as every time, and she snaps. "Well, the freaking dogs woke up, okay? You can't stay here unless you want your freaky vampire-hunter-dash-Frankenstein mentor to keep on experimenting on you. Which if you do," she makes a show of gesturing with her hands. "By all means, _stay_."

He falters. His frown deepens and his whole face contorts, but Caroline can see him tottering on his feet. Terrified.

Her stomach drops beneath the weight of her guilt, but there is nothing she can do to help him. She's made her choice.

So she turns around on her feet and rushes out of his apartment before he can say another word.

* * *

The thing she doesn't say—

—she's going to need a new (fake) boyfriend hanging from her arm by the time the plane lands in Louisiana.

Those were the terms of their agreement.

"It's for your own safety, love," he said, before turning away to jump off the roof.

She knows the alternative. This is her choice, and she won't have it taken away from her even if it kills her, making it.

She knows—

Klaus wouldn't have come here to let her know about Tyler and the baby and what is happening in New Orleans if he hadn't been secretly asking for help. But so far, he tells her, Tyler hasn't even uttered her name since the first night he met Klaus in the Bayou, and Hayley knows better than even acknowledging her existence. Nobody knows. Nobody can _know_ that he and she—

Jesse's not an expendable subterfuge, you have to understand.

But she can't leave him behind. Jesse knows enough but not too much. He knows about Tyler and he knows about the originals and he knows about the baby.

He doesn't know about Klaus.

"He'll be perfect, love," he whispered, words sliding like snakes beneath the cracks of Klaus's cold-hearted smile. "I think he really likes you. You sure he isn't sired?

She had never hated him more. She wanted to slap him, to wrench his eyes out with her nails and squeeze her fists around his lungs. But she hadn't been able to move a muscle. Let alone speak.

* * *

This is war, and war is coming.

* * *

Two months later, she hasn't been able to rinse off the taste of bile off her tongue.

No amount of sterilized bagged blood will wash away the aftertaste of him and her, and of the pieces of her soul that she has misplaced along the way.

**.end**

* * *

**A/N: In my head, this is a one-shot, somehow explaining how I think current canon events might lead up to the two shows converging. I understand this story, as it is, may require a follow-up—and if anyone wants to give it a try, please do! Personally, however, I can't bring myself to write a story, even another one-shot, about Caroline showing up in New Orleans with the MF gang to help Klaus fight a supernatural war while having to pretend she doesn't even know him. Not again. I'd like to see something like this little story in canon, so I wrote it to deal with canon. But I'm afraid Mardi Gras is all the NOLA crossover fic I'm going to be able to handle for the time being. At least under these premises. And I can't think of any other premises that make sense to me and are not a complete victimization of Caroline's character for the sake of Klaus's heroics. **

**On another topic, I have a significant part of Chapter 6 of Terrible Creatures written already. It includes a very nice mythologizing tale about the history of Hayley's family, and I'd like to see that posted. But as I try to write present-time narrative about Caroline being with Klaus in New Orleans and dealing with Davina and Marcel and the whole business—I can't bring myself to write a word. I'm exhausted of trying to make sense of the canon of a show I am not even watching, and of trying to expand it and complete it through fic. It makes no sense to write fic for a show you can't be bothered to even watch because, at least for me, writing fic takes more effort than watching TV. So I don't know what's going to happen with that. Soon, I think, I will try and give another shot to The Originals. I may like it. I am actually thrilled that Tyler is going to be there, best news ever, really. If I like it and get familiar with the canon, I'll be inspired, and writing crossovers that take place around TO canon won't be such a chore. So I am not giving up on TC. But it may be a while. Thought I'd let you guys know.**

**And, as always—**

**Thank you very, very much for reading. I hope you liked this little story.**


End file.
